[JURIST] The US military said Saturday that it has released over 10,000 Iraqi detainees [JURIST news archive] this past year. Gen. David H. Petraeus [official profile] was quoted by AP as saying the releases are part of a program to prepare detainees for re-integration into society. Petraeus also said the recidivism rate for released detainees is less than 1 percent. The announcement comes after a similar statement [JURIST report] made last month that 9,000 detainees had been released thusfar in 2008. AP has more.

Coalition detention practices have come under increasing scrutiny in recent months. In July, Iraqi Foreign Minister Moshyar Zebarai [BBC profile] indicated that disagreements between the US and Iraq, including disagreements over detainees, are still blocking a permanent Status of Forces Agreement [JURIST report] between the two countries. In June, Physicians for Human Rights released a report purporting to substantiate claims of abuse and torture [JURIST report] by detainees held in US prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archives].

[JURIST] Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) [party website, in Turkish] has decided for the time being to cease its opposition to the country's ban on wearing headscarves in public universities [JURIST report], according to a party spokesman. The announcement made Thursday came a day after Turkey's Constitutional Court [official website, in Turkish] rejected a bid to ban [JURIST reports] the AKP on the grounds that it was not respecting Turkey's strict secular principles. In June, the Constitutional Court rejected AKP-backed amendments to Turkey's constitution [text] designed to ease the ban on headscarves, finding that they, however, were too anti-secularist. AP has more.

The AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [BBC profile; JURIST report] had proposed the amendments in what they described as an attempt to provide equal access to higher education for women adhering to a stricter interpretation of Islam, but the pro-secular opposition Republican People's Party [party website, in Turkish] appealed [JURIST report] to the Constitutional Court, saying maintenance of the broad ban was necessary to protect the country's separation of religion and state and alleging that the Islamist-based AKP was pushing a conservative religious agenda.